Here is a warm welcome for any student encountering eighteenth-century literature for the first time. This lively and practical handbook opens the door on a wealth of materials to engage them and set them thinking for themselves. The range of critical approaches and the mix of context and analysis make for a volume that introduces rather than packages. - Professor David Fairer, University of Leeds, UK
An innovative as well as a practical and level-headed guidebook, written by engaged and experienced scholars and teachers, which sets out for students at university level some of the central concepts, contexts and approaches, and gives a sense of the variety, challenge and excitement to be found in the study of British literature of the long eighteenth century. - Marcus Walsh, Kenneth Allott Professor of English Literature, University of Liverpool, UK
For undergraduate students, Day and Keegan introduce British literature and culture in the eighteenth century. In the ten chapters, which follow a progressive learning strategy rather than a chronological discussion, a group of English, literature, and history scholars from the UK and US discuss authors, texts, and historical and cultural contexts, including Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Swift; key critics, concepts, and topics, such as aesthetics, criticism, feminism, the novel, Romanticism, and satire; gender, sexuality, and ethnicity; major critical approaches, changes in the canon, and directions for research; and case studies in reading literary and theoretical and critical texts. -Eithne O'Leyne, BOOK NEWS, Inc.
... offers an excellent introduction to students... the immense body of information is expressed in a lucid and lively manner, and the seemingly effortless synthesis of so many different aspects of eighteenth-century writing and culture presented here makes it an exciting, stimulating, and welcoming text for newcomers, as well as a very handy source for teachers and scholars. -- The Year's Work in English Studies, Volume 90